


The signal’s a cough

by Agf



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Bonding, Ghosts, Multi, My disaster children, Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:55:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28385121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Agf/pseuds/Agf
Summary: “Believe me, you’ll be grateful for this carefully curated aesthetic when we’re done,” Klaus sniffs. He waves Lila inside his room.Today is, after all, his turn up to bat. Her chance to play at being Number Four.Or: Lila takes Klaus's powers for a spin.
Relationships: (alluded to), Diego Hargreeves/Lila Pitts, Klaus Hargreeves & Lila Pitts, Klaus Hargreeves/David "Dave" Katz
Comments: 17
Kudos: 150
Collections: Hosted by Elliott's House: The Great Year End Fuck 2020 TUA Fandom Bang!





	The signal’s a cough

**Author's Note:**

> This is my TUA bang submission! Title from ‘I summon you’ by Spoon. 
> 
> And the song Klaus plays, in case you want to line it up and listen to it at the same time for the ~full TUA experience~ (recommended), is ‘Shame Shame Shame’ by Linda Fields.

“Well, this is all very… kitsch,” Lila says, leaning in the doorway of Klaus’s room.

It’s still snowing outside, has been for days, and Klaus has pulled gauzy curtains over the windows and draped blankets around the rest of the room to keep out the cold. He has a few candles lit and dancing merrily in the draft, an incense stick burning the scent of patchouli everywhere, and a string of tangled fairy lights glowing from a knotted heap on one chair.

He looks up from his position rummaging around under the bed when he hears her and sits back on his heels, blowing his hair out of his face. “Thank you,” he says, like he completely missed the judgement in her tone. “I try.”

“To decorate like a pre-teen indie wannabe? You _succeed,_ ” Lila replies.

She has a half-eaten apple dangling from one hand - a sure sign she just finished training with Luther, who always insists on making her eat something afterwards, like she needs the sugars.

Ever since Diego and Five went on their ill-fated mission to find her - and subsequently missed her dramatic arrival at the Academy - they’ve been taking it in turns to help get her accustomed to using their powers. They’re trying to avoid making a Vanya-shaped mistake, this time around.

Klaus thinks they’re right on track to make a _Lila-shaped_ mistake instead, but then Klaus is tragically rarely listened to. Besides, Lila seems to _want_ to train, for whatever reason. She’s like Five - hungry for that next thrill, to succeed at something for the satisfaction alone.

“Believe me, you’ll be grateful for this carefully curated aesthetic when we’re done,” Klaus sniffs. He waves her inside.

Today is, after all, his turn up to bat. Lila’s chance to play at being Number Four.

It's never quiet in this place, not really, but lately Klaus has been feeling a silence he can't explain. Or can, but won't. Maybe it's the snow, dampening all the sound outside and encouraging everyone to stay home in the warm. Maybe it's just the chill of it, and he's still not quite over that childish response to link _cold_ with _quiet_ with _alone_. 

Anyway. 

Klaus suspects they all feel that way, a little, and it's why Lila's allowing herself to be passed around like a particularly talented hot potato.

She drops down onto one of the floor cushions he’s set out, folding her legs and crunching an obnoxiously open-mouthed bite of apple. Klaus goes back to pulling dusty relics out from under his bed until he finally unearths the bag of cassettes he’s looking for.

“What’s that for?” Lila asks. She’s aiming for disinterest, Klaus thinks, but she’s about as good at it as Diego is.

“Mood music,” he replies. He sits in the spot opposite her and sets the tape player in the space between their bent knees.

Lila looks unimpressed. “Mood music.”

God, Klaus has no idea why he agreed to this.

Actually, that’s a lie. He knows exactly why he agreed - he agreed because Five is a dirty emotional blackmailer, that’s why. Because Five had been making sure to loudly talk about how his and Lila’s _combined power_ was opening up all kinds of new possibilities. How she was _amplifying things_.

Little shit thought he was subtle, probably. Whatever. It doesn’t matter anyway, because it worked. The next time Lila had asked, he’d said, “Sure! What could possibly go wrong?”

Klaus has some people he wants to see, hanging around on the other side of this shady veil; people who aren’t answering his calls. Maybe, like Five’s suggesting, he just needs a louder megaphone.

“Let’s get this party started,” Lila says. She tosses her apple core over her shoulder and out through the open bedroom door, rubbing her hands together. “You ready?”

The other issue, of course, is that Klaus _likes_ Lila. Which means he’s had to approach this whole training session like an anti-Reginald. (Which is, to be fair, usually the Klaus way). He doesn't want to overwhelm her, or throw her in at the deep end with the blind hope that her shady past means she'll be chill being surrounded by shambling corpses with vengeful streaks.

The only thing he can think to do is plan for it to work as if… as if he’s going to guide her through her first time on acid, talk her round on a weird trip, instead of setting her up to face down the barrel of a room full of dead people with no sense of personal space.

He glances around. Maybe not quite an entire room full, but there are two ghosts hanging out here already. Mostly, they seem more interested in him than Lila, though Klaus suspects that’s only because they’ve worked out that he can see them.

Lila blows out an exasperated breath, clearly getting impatient, and Klaus slides his gaze back to her. He shakes his head a little. “Sure,” Klaus says. He hits play on the tape recorder and it starts up quietly. Seventies funk. The best music for a weird trip. 

Lila raises one eyebrow and leans on her bent wrist, glancing around the room with an expectant look. "Is there anyone there?" She whispers, enjoying herself. "Make a sound, write a message in blood, whatever takes your fancy." 

"Don't give them ideas," Klaus shushes her. Now for the fireworks. Lila shifts in her seat and watches as Klaus lights his hands up in blue - then whips around to stare at the woman now visible in the corner of the room, clutching her bleeding throat.

"Fuck me," Lila says. "That is… grim."

She sounds the same as usual, but Klaus can see the tightening of her shoulders. "She's Ukrainian, I think," he says brightly. A good first choice, for this very reason - she won't understand Lila's insults. "Smile at her."

Lila shoots him a glare, but Klaus plasters a grin over his face and stares her down.

"This is so weird," Lila replies. She smiles, though, and it's only… 90% frightening. The Ukrainian woman smiles back, and waves one blood-covered hand.

To her credit, Lila doesn't flinch.

Klaus’s hands are still burning a faint blue around the edge of his fingernails, like a drowning victim, but he's getting better at this himself. Sobriety helps. It doesn't take much effort to hold the Ukrainian woman visible anymore. The rest of his power sits behind his ribcage; a bright, hungry thing, desperate to reach out for the other figure in the room that only he can see.

Sometimes, he thinks this must have been how Ben felt, with the Horror curled up inside.

The coiling in his chest reaches out again, the tugging sensation that Klaus recognises now as a kind of desperate searching, and comes up empty. No Ben to find and drag out of the light. He doesn’t try now, not with Lila still watching him with her dark eyes, but he knows it’d be the same if he went hunting for Dave.

His chest spikes painfully - the phone rings, but no one’s ever home.

“I think I see how this works,” Lila announces after a moment more of watching. “It’s kind of like Five’s thing. Did you know that?”

“How’d you mean?”

She rolls her shoulders. “Pulling open a door where there isn’t a door.”

Klaus has already decided which ghost he wants to edge Lila towards. This one’s been following her around for a few days, but he’s quiet. The only visible wound is a gash in the leg that kind of blends into his sensible slacks. Klaus gestures him over with a jerk of his head.

“Okay,” he says, “I guess this is where you see if you can--”

He doesn’t finish the sentence, because when he turns back to Lila, he finds her whole forearms encased in blue.

Blue like she’s going to tear a hole in time. Blue like Five must be somewhere nearby. Blue like ‘duck and cover, shit is about to get ugly’.

Klaus pushes himself half-upright, losing his grip on the Ukrainian woman. She knocks over a lamp when she shuffles towards them regardless.

“Lila?” he says, trying not to sound panicked. “Sure, good, I think you got it, pause for just a second?”

Lila, who a second ago was laughing along with him, doesn't even seem to hear him speak. The blue just edges higher - up to her elbows, creeping midway to her shoulders, an echo of the light in her eyes. 

Klaus has just enough time to think _oh, fuck_. 

“Hello Lila,” sensible-slacks says. He leaves a bloody footprint on Klaus’s floor when he steps towards her.

The tape player is still playing merrily between their bent knees. _If you really think you're fast, try to catch me if you can…_

Bloody footprints, smashed lamp. Lila hasn’t just made them visible, she’s jumped straight into making them corporeal somehow. That took Klaus years to master. And ‘master’ was a kind word for it. “Wait, what are you-?” he asks.

Then there’s a weird feeling, like a swooping under his feet, and another face joins the two in the room. The candles putter and sway in an unnatural draft. One of the blankets over the windows falls to the floor in a heap. Another face. Then another.

Klaus can feel his own power yawning and aching to join in - because it’s not him summoning these people. It’s Lila.

She’s gazing unseeingly around the room, a small crease between her eyebrows. Each time, she takes a moment to examine the new face, shakes her head slightly, and then pulls another figure forwards. Repeat. Repeat.

“I think you’ve got the hang of it,” Klaus says, trying to catch her eye. There’s at least a half-dozen ghosts here now, beginning to block her from his sight. Klaus has always known that dear old Dad was an asshole flying by the seat of his pants, but this makes him at least thirty percent more convinced of it - because what back-up plans did he have to stop this? What would he have done if Klaus himself had started off this well - if he'd pulled handfuls of spirits forwards and given them enough energy to stick around? How do you stop a scared kid from summoning an entire army?

 _Christ_ , he wishes he knew the answer, shitty as it would inevitably be, because he doesn't know how to stop this. Klaus barely has a grip on the summoning part, _dismissal_ is a board game he hasn't even touched. “Lila? That’s enough," he tries, "I was gonna start you on _one_.”

The fairy lights on the chair shine brighter, brighter, blindingly bright, then the bulbs all blow at once.

When Klaus turns back to Lila, there are another five figures surrounding her.

The searching, tugging feeling is still there. She’s still opening the gateway _wider_.

“Oh, fuck.” Klaus hisses. He tugs at his hair and casts about for something to do. He’d been with someone on a bad trip before. The guy was a newbie - fresh out of college, still burning through his parent’s money and convinced that he was one psychedelic experience away from a breakthrough that would make him a millionaire.

Klaus remembers him chewing his bottom lip to shreds. All the blood down his shirt pulsing like squid legs.

Sensible-slacks reaches for Lila’s face. He touches her hair. Moves it. Tucks it behind her ear.

Once the others see that they’re corporeal, suddenly they’re all over her; snowflakes in a flurry. Lila screams.

Klaus acts instinctively. He pulls the ‘on’ feeling over himself like a coat and throws himself at the bundle, arms over his face.

Fingers catch on his hair, his shirt, his bare skin. Lila’s there too - warmer than the others - thrashing underneath him. One of her hands catches him across the face. Klaus grips it by the wrist and slams it against the wooden floor.

“Lila, it’s me!" A tug, a tug, a tug. More summonings. Klaus thinks, _where the fuck is everyone else?_ And then, with a kind of horrified glee, _what would they even be able to do if they were here?_

He's never felt as aware of his own power as he does seeing it reflected in Lila's eyes. Still, he could do without the edge of terror. "It's Klaus," he clarifies, "You have to stop now!”

There's a moment of absolute silence, everything in the room on pause, and then the blue fades all at once. The reaching hands start to go _through_ them, no longer physically there.

Lila blinks back to awareness slowly, then scrambles away from Klaus until she hits the wall. “Fuck! What the hell was that?”

Klaus sits back on his heels and surveys the damage to his room. There's smashed glass over the rug from the lamp, the majority of the candles have burnt out in the draft from the uncovered windows, the cassette player has been knocked over by their knees. Lila's hair is sticking up in every direction. There's a long scratch mark across her cheek, and her eyes are wide and wild. She looks terrified.

“I think that was, ‘what’s the worst that can happen?’” Klaus says, eventually.

Perfectly on time, Diego appears in the doorway with a knife in hand. He scans the room for evidence of some kind of intruder. “What’s happening?”

“Fuck, fuck, _fuck,_ ” Lila repeats. She shudders all over, a single, full-body shake, and then uncoils herself from the floor. “That was… enlightening.”

One of the ghosts screams into her face, but she doesn’t flinch this time. Klaus can only assume she’s just… turned it off. He reaches out and hits eject on his tape, pretending he can’t see Lila turning into Diego’s chest. He also pretends he doesn’t see her pocket a knife, because… well. Because he can’t blame her for wanting the protection, really.

“Same time next week?” he jokes into the awkward tension.

“Oh hell no. I need a drink,” Lila says.

“Ah ah,” Klaus holds out a finger, “Klaus-shaped problem. I’m calling it right now, nip that in the bud.” There are a lot of bodies clustering around Lila, though she remains blissfully unaware of them, tucked under Diego's arm. That's only going to last so long, though, since Klaus can't stop his gaze sliding to watch them. “Hey - we should go get waffles instead," he suggests, "Diego? You could drive us.”

Diego pulls a face, but he doesn’t get to even _start_ his sentence, let alone finish it, before Lila is pulling him forwards and kissing him soundly. She also steals the knife from his hand and tosses it out into the corridor. Klaus can just about hear the _thud_ it makes as it hits its mark downstairs.

“Waffles will be fun,” she says, syrup-sweet.

“Fine.”

Without looking, Lila holds her hand out for Klaus to high-five her. Which he does, obviously. The look on his brother’s face when he realises what he’s created is worth a hundred waffles. 

Klaus hangs back to snub out the remaining candles while Lila and Diego bicker their way down to the car. A couple of the figures leave, now that Lila isn’t around, but the others are persistent. They tramp over the remains of the smashed lamp with their weightless feet. Klaus edges around them as subtly as he can to gather up a bundle of blankets and set them in the doorway.

He can sleep downstairs tonight. That’ll be fine. Just until they’re gone.

He grabs his coat, and when he spins around Lila’s back in the doorway, watching him.

“We should get you a bell,” Klaus informs her, ignoring the prickle of… something from having been observed. “Leave something?”

She doesn’t answer for a long moment, just looks around the room again, as if cataloguing all the places she’d seen the dead hanging out only minutes before. Or maybe she’s admiring Klaus’s interior design skills. Either is possible.

“You can summon anyone, right?” She asks, eventually.

Klaus rubs at one bicep. “That’s the theory.”

"And you've done it before? People you wanted to see, I mean."

"A couple of times."

Lila nods, apparently satisfied. She knocks twice on the wooden doorframe, then shoots him a grin that’s only one-part scary to nine-parts sweet, as opposed to the usual inverse. “I’ll help get yours if you help get mine,” she offers.

Behind him, the remaining ghosts have started up shouting again, muscling to try and get closer to Lila, brushing against Klaus’s back and making his arms erupt in goosebumps.

Not one of them is a face Klaus wants to see.

Lila shoves a hand forward, unwavering and warm.

Klaus had thought he needed a bigger megaphone. Lila crooks her head to one side and smiles. The cacophony of ghosts she’d summoned on her first ever try is almost deafening.

Klaus rubs his mouth and laughs. “Why not,” he says. “What could go wrong?” He shakes her hand.


End file.
